Vinnie Jones CPR advert cleared by watchdog

A TV campaign featuring Vinnie Jones teaching people how to resuscitate someone, set to the rhythm of the Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive, has been cleared by the advertising watchdog despite complaints it featured a medically unsafe technique.

The TV ad campaign, launched by the British Heart Foundation in January, featured Jones in the guise of one of the east London-style hard men he has become known for playing in films such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Jones was featured showing members of the public how to perform "hands-only" cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, on a body that was made to look like the victim of a gangland incident.

The Advertising Standards Authority received 20 complaints that the ad, in which Jones teaches the correct timing of the technique by performing CPR to the song, is harmful and likely to encourage unsafe behaviour as he is shown performing it incorrectly.

In response to the ASA, the BHF said the UK has appalling survival rates of cardiac arrests that occur outside hospitals and the campaign had raised awareness of life-saving techniques, with 15 reported instances of people applying lessons from the ad with a positive outcome.

The BHF admitted the "gold standard" of CPR remained teaching how to perform it including mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but that if someone was untrained or unsure then hands-only was better than no attempt to save a victim.

The ASA said the ad was clearly aimed at those with brief or opportunistic training and did not believe it would discourage those with a working knowledge of mouth-to-mouth.

"Because the ad showed correct techniques for hands-only CPR, we concluded the ad was not harmful and did not encourage unsafe behaviour," said the ASA.

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